shopping

Given my choice of buying a pair of jeans or going to the dentist, I'd always choose the dentist. Any novel where a woman's shoe-buying hobby is considered character development is not worth reading further. One summer, by a series of unlikely circumstances, I ended up selling women's clothes in a nice department store and it was Kafka vs. Nietzsche. I watched a lot of "Xena the Warrior Princess" that summer, let me tell you.

So I hardly ever shop other than pillaging grocers. If sizes actually were standardized, I'd probably buy everything online. The next best thing is Goodwill stores. I still try to go only a couple of times a year, but the odd treasure outweighs the existential anguish.

I'm going to a wedding soon and this prompted a trip yesterday. I distracted myself from the clothes by scoping the household stuff. I resisted the very nice white gravy boat for $3. I'm the last cook in America who denies the microwave, so I could have justified the $1 doubleboiler for melting chocolate. But do I need to melt more chocolate? No.

But my husband found the duck picture and bought it for me. A label on the back, undated, explains that it's an imitation of a 19th cent. style, printed and then watercolored. I was nonplussed at first--what duck looks like that?? It's like a mallard in the worst pit of Van Gogh's yellow period.

But I searched the Internet for the duck, whose genus and species is part of the print. Lo and behold, that's a real duck in Australia! The Australian Shelduck. And the picture is quite a good likeness. The Internet being what it is, I readily found videos, zoo info. on its life cycle, its original classification in 1828, and a company that will sell me a live pair for $650.

Sorry the photo isn't better. To get a good picture, I'd need to remove it from the frame, which is going to be a significant operation and I don't yet have the frame that will be its new home. It's the first piece of art I've bought since moving here in '06.